Practice review, Day 4: Crabtree still out but plenty others catching passes

The 49ers’ fourth full-squad practice — and second in pads — brought with it pleny of aerial highlights. None, however, came from Michael Crabtree, who sat out his third straight day with an apparent right calf strain.

Let’s get to the highlights:

– The offensive play of the day goes to Randy Moss, who reached high to snag a short pass from Alex Smith just passed the first-down marker on a pseudo third-down situation. (Reminder: The 49ers struggled on third downs last season, especially in the playoffs.)

– Before the 49ers started team drills, the four quarterbacks took turns in an accuracy drill. They would throw nine balls into a net featuring three targets, each one approximately 2-feet-by-2-feet. All fared reasonably well. Colin Kaepernick saved the best sequence for the last by drilling each target, although one ball popped out of the net at the end.

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– Demarcus Dobbs, who made last year’s roster as an undrafted defensive end, helped his bid to make this year’s team as a two-way player. He’s also been lining up at tight end, and Monday he made two athletic catches.

– Ben Hannula, a defensive back who moonlights at receiver, also had a pair of nice catches, including one against the tight coverage of starting cornerback Tarell Brown.

– Smith completed a 25-yard pass over the middle to A.J. Jenkins, arguably the top catch Monday by the first-round draft pick who coach Jim Harbaugh so vociferously defended Sunday.

– Defensive play(s) of the day: Patrick Willis stripped Vernon Davis after a catch at the start of 11-on-11 drills. Willis also made a nice intercepting by first deflecting a Scott Tolzien pass that was intended for rookie tight end Garrett Celek.

– Chris Culliver intercepted a Josh Johnson pass intended for Brian Tyms. Culliver often has been lining up at left cornerback in nickel situations — as was the case last season — but he said after practice he also is competing with Brown for the starting job at right cornerback.

– Joe Hastings did not practice, apparently because of a strained hamstring Sunday. Also out was cornerback Curtis Holcomb, who tore an Achiles last year.

Cam Inman

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It’s funny no one in the media and/or 49er fans realize the real reason why Harbs has publicly come out to take a jab at Jenkins’ critics (the front) is to indirectly put pressure on the 5 so call #1 WRs and specifically Micheal Failtree to step up, stop missing TC and preseason and live up to his expectation and paycheck (for the past 3 seasons, since he was drafted, he has missed ALL TCs and Preseasons and on top of that was beyond pathetic in the biggest game of his career NFCC in his 3rd yr as a NFL WR). His comments let’s NOT only the critics know there are NOW more than able options at WR on the roster ready to take over Failtree’s spot and position on the roster and if he doesn’t do his job and do it better than last year, he will be replaced. Harb will rather spend his positive energy and support for someone that is going to progress, than someone who is injury prone or other wise a slacker that has always slack before regular season and some how missed TCs and the Preseason intentionally or not. After the pathetic showing of the WRs in NFCC, the writing is on the wall, this time around might be the last for Failtree. BTW, it was the same trick used to put pressure on Alex Smith to sign the deal with the 49ers by intentionally leaking out that they check out Manning weeks after the fact, even though there were NO further pursuit at all after the initial visit… You have to understand, Harb is NOT Singletary or Jeff Fisher as a matter of fact, he will never publicly said anything negative about or to his player, that makes you look bad as a NFL HC or any type of coach as a matter of fact (look what happened to those 2 HCs with their perspective teams after negative public incidents with their players). In this instance he merely used the media to put pressure on the other so called #1 WR on the roster, specifically Failtree… Not hard to understand at all LOL…